A. Field of the Invention
The present invention is related to tracking systems for tracking persons or objects inside a predetermined geographical area and more particularly to a system for tracking objects or persons or customized groups of objects or persons worldwide in real time, including the inside of buildings, and perform several tracking functions.
B. Description of Related Art
With the advent of localization (locating) equipment using different technologies such as GPS, RFID, and other localization technologies which help to locate an object or person by triangulation, sensing or signal strength among others, it is very common to be able to locate individual objects and persons either inside some facilities or even worldwide.
However it is sometime necessary to keep tracking a plurality of objects or persons at the same time in real time and from a remote place, for example a group of kids inside a school and getting alerts every time a member of the family exits the school or any other predetermined area.
Furthermore, sometimes it is required to monitor a group of persons in different changing places during predetermined periods of time and getting alarms if one member of said group exits one of said places. The current systems allow to monitor predefined areas, but do not allow to create customized monitoring areas worldwide neither create customized monitoring areas inside buildings.
U.S. Patent application No. 20080068157 discloses a communication control system which includes a monitoring terminal held by each of a plurality of persons to be monitored and an information managing apparatus for managing position information on the monitor terminal. The monitor terminal has a position information obtaining unit for obtaining geographical position information, a group setting unit for setting a group of monitor terminals of persons to be monitored who are allowed to be mutually grouped, and a first transmitting unit for transmitting the obtained position information and group setting information to the information managing apparatus. The information managing apparatus has a first receiving unit for receiving the position information and the group setting information, a management information storing unit for storing attribute information on the person to be monitored and a condition for determining a monitor level of the person to be monitored, a mutual distance recognizing unit for calculating a distance between the monitor terminals from the position information, and a monitor level determining unit for determining the present monitor level based on the calculated distance, the attribute information, and the monitor level determination condition.
Although it is disclosed that the system can manage groups of persons to be monitored, it does not disclose that the system can notify alerts if a persons exits a predetermined customized area since it discloses notifications of “monitoring” levels of the monitored persons and neither discloses means for customizing monitoring areas worldwide or inside buildings.
In view of the above referred problems, applicant developed a tracking system for creating person or object communities (such as vehicles, objects having a high monetary value or objects that continuously need to be monitored such as guns or medical equipment) and keep tracking of said communities in real time worldwide, as well as registering a tracking history of each person or object.
The tracking system of the present invention also allows creating customized monitoring zones worldwide and tracking rules for setting customized alarms, for example when the distance among one or more members of the group or members of different groups are greater or lesser than an predetermined value, when a member of the group exits a predetermined area or is near a predetermined area or when a person or object remains in a single spot for more or less than a predetermined period of time, which is useful for monitoring the security of a person or object.
Thanks to the high degree of customization of the tracking system of the present invention, it can be adapted to be used in several service areas such as scholar, security, military, medical, etc.